warp-text plugin

Depends what you mean by warping.
You are probably correct thinking along the paths route.
You can create & save a path as an svg file & import back into another image.

So you could apply some text to that path using this
http://registry.gimp.org/node/24568
Good instructions on that page or a little video here
http://youtu.be/HlCEW8UOj4o